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D23: Live Action Round-Up – The Muppets Wins, John Carter Stumbles and Oz: The Great and Powerful introduces itself!

Damon Houx — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 23:08:03 +0000

Though The Odd Life of Timothy Green and the nature film Chimpanzee had trailers shown (and Jennifer Garner talked briefly about Green), the majority of attention for Disney’s live Actions films at D23 went to The Muppets and John Carter. The Muppets went over like gangbusters, while Carter just busted. There was also a brief presentation on Oz: The Great and Powerful, which just started shooting. Our report follows.

John Carter

John Carter‘s presentation began with director Andrew Stanton fumbling his way through a teleprompter, talking about how he and the writers loved the books when they were younger. Then they brought out stars Taylor Kitsch, Willem Dafoe and Lynn Collins to talk about the film, and though Kitsch spoke passionattely about his enthusiasm for the project, Collins came off as a blank, and Dafoe was relegated to talking about how he did his part (as a motion captured nine foot tall, four-armed martian) on stilts. The first clip showed John Carter (Kitsch) during his first day on Mars, and his first experience with Dafoe’s Tars Tarkas as they try to understand each other. Perhaps the desert settings make it a little colder, but there was no sense of wonder there as a CGI creation and a guy in a desert who can jump really high try to communicate for the first time.

The second clip was probably the best as Carter is captured, put in a semi-prison and then meets a martain dog who wants to play with him. The dog has a large head and mouth and can run real fast. Again, the problem with the footage so far is that everything is a little too familiar. The dog looks like when the Dog in The Mask puts on the Mask.
In the third clip, Carter is with Dejah Thoris (Collins), and she gives him a magical trinket that has the power to transport him back to Earth. The two have a lovers argument as she wants him to stay and fight, and then at the end of the footage Dominic West shows up (and immediately made it seem like The Wire vs. Friday Night Lights) and Carter seems gone. The problem with this clip is that if this is a scene with the hero and the leading lady at ninety minute mark of the film, him leaving is not really dramatic, because he can’t. He’s the hero of the piece (hence the title).
The last clip had Carter and Tarkas in an arena facing off against a giant four armed ape. Yes, everyone in the auditorium started thinking “hey this is like Attack of the Clones” at the same time.
With the third clip having no great context, and the rest looking like familiar empty spectacle, the footage didn’t win over many converts. There was no hint at the pulp origins of the material, nor and it didn’t seem very propulsive – the model would seem to be Raiders of the Lost Ark, but with a dour hero, perhaps they’re going The Dark Knight/”moody” route. There might be a good movie in there, but when Stanton said that the teaser trailer suggested the tone of the film, well watch it and see if that gets you excited.

The Muppets

The Muppets brought out Jason Segel, Kermit and Miss Piggy to talk about the film. Though their antics were kept short (and Piggy arriving to “Born to be Wild” wasn’t a great joke), they showed two scenes from the film, and both were great. The first had Segel, along with a new muppet named Walter, and Amy Adams arriving at Kermit’s place, where Kermit has become a recluse. After running into an electric fence, Kermit takes them in, and in his house we meet Kermit’s stuck-in-the-80′s robot, who is designed a little like Wall*E, but also the robot in Rocky IV as it offers the guests the options of Tab or New Coke.
The second clip shows the Muppets cleaning up the Muppet theater in a musical number staged to Starship’s “We Built This City,” and they couldn’t have found a more winning sequence to highlight. The Swedish Chef, the Muppet band (Animal!) and many other regulars make an appearance as they clean in a montage of funny bits (the chickens dust with their rumps, old food gets blow-torched, etc.) If you love the muppets, it looks liek they got the tone right, irreverent, but childish.

Oz: The Great and Powerful

Oz: The Great and Powerful just started shooting in Detroit, but Sam Raimi gave a personal introduction via video, and a featurette played, with interviews with James Franco, Zach Braff and the film’s witches Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams, and Rachel Weisz. AS this is just going, the interviews with vacuous. Everyone followed the standard interview procedures of talking about how great it was, and right at the end there seemed to be a shot from the film – in black and white and 1.33:1 – that is meant to mimic the 1939 Wizard of Oz. The stills shown of the storyboards and conceptual art seemed familiar to the ’39 version, but of a greater (and CGI enhanced) scale. It also reminded a little of Tim Burton‘s Alice in Wonderland. At this stage, it’s hard to know how it will turn out.

What of these films do you most want to see?

Review Roundup: ‘Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes’

Travis Woods — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 18:00:19 +0000

Curious as to whether or not you should plunk down your hard-earned dollars on a movie about James Franco dealing with some peskily sentient and maybe sorta kinda revolutionary apes that might just one day really piss off Charlton Heston? Well, if so, dig our round up of what the critics thought of Rise of the Planet of the Apes below—we’ve laid out a representative of critical pros and cons concerning the new ape flick.

The Good:

Time Magazine:

As both a simian simile and a wonder of technology, Rise of the Planet of the Apes deserves to be in the company of the great original Kong. This year’s sixth “origins” story of a fantasy franchise (after The Green Hornet, Thor, X-Men: First Class, Green Lantern and Captain America: The First Avenger) is also the year’s finest action movie.

Los Angeles Times:

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes” traces the roots of the venerable franchise back to a single resident of contemporary San Francisco, a supersmart simian named Caesar. In the process, the film, which Rupert Wyatt directed from an audacious screenplay by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, rises above its dramatic deficits, boosts the collective IQ of this summer’s movies and swings into flights of kinetic fantasy that blow the collective mind.

The So-So:

Entertainment Weekly:

The biggest disappointment of the halfhearted, digitally impersonal Rise of the Planet of the Apes, apart from how just-okay it is in almost every way, is that the grandeur is gone…unlike good sci-fi, it doesn’t signify anything, or really even try to — it’s just an apes-on-the-rampage creature feature, with a decent setup, a wobbly second act, and a glorified-videogame urban-action-war payoff.

NPR:

Constructed around the reliable premise that if you slather on the spectacle, audiences won’t notice the script’s idiocies — otherwise known as the Avatar effect — this so-called origin picture is no more than a narrative outline padded with moderately special effects, a teaser for the sequels that will surely follow.

And The Ugly:

Slant Magazine:

Faced with the horror of half-assed material from which he can’t escape, James Franco allows himself to be steamrolled by his pet monkey. The proof is the dynamic between the multi-hyphenate entertainer and his infinitely more animated animal co-star in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a relationship not unlike the one between the actor and Anne Hathaway at the 83rd Academy Awards.

Miami Herald:

James Franco looks more bored and distracted in Rise of the Planet of the Apes than he did when he was hosting the Oscars: Watching the movie, I kept waiting for him to pull out his iPhone, aim it at the camera and take a snapshot while mugging sheepishly. Has there ever been a film with a less engaged protagonist?

Will you be seeing Rise of the Planet of the Apes?

New Rise of the Planet of the Apes Teaser Sells the Movie

Damon Houx — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:56:38 +0000

One of the most exciting-looking movies of the summer is Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Though 20th Century Fox hasn’t always treated the franchise with respect – either in the original run or in it’s re-imagined Tim Burton fiasco – but the story is durable because man’s relationship to nature and meddling scientists are an evergreen subject. Now there’s a new teaser for the film starring James Franco, and it plays like gangbusters. Check it out…

Though the presence of Tom Felton as ape-hating character seems a little labored, all the new details suggest that this could be epic (and if the film deals with apes as partly an issue of race – as other Apes films have – turning a firehose on the primates with strengthen that point), even if much of the action of the uprising is third act material.

Also, it’s nice to see more John Lithgow, both in the footage, and just in general. It’s also notable that this trailer doesn’t feature that much Franco, which is both good and bad. He gets a killer “driving away” shot, though. And then there’s that wonderful monkey mayhem. Hopefully the film will live up to the promise of these trailers, though the work on Caesar – the main ape played by Andy Serkis – already looks like next level stuff. We’ll know for sure August 5.

Ape Shall Never Kill Ape!

New Rise of the Planet of the Apes Trailer

Damon Houx — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 19:57:32 +0000

Is 2011 the summer of the good prequel? With X-Men: First Class hitting theaters and earning mostly good reviews, it would be great to see that trend continue with Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The film, which stars James Franco, Brian Cox, and Frieda Pinto, hits theaters in August, but the latest trailer seems to show much of that uprising in action. Check it out…

We’ve been informed that the monkey mayhem toward the end of the trailer is from the third act, so the question becomes “how does the film function in total?” Is there an interesting science fiction idea at the heart of the film, or is it a lot of waiting around for the monkeys to get their revolution on? And how will Franco be in a more straight-laced science role? Is he believable as a genius-level scientist, or is he too lightweight?

These are the unknowns, but the knowns are that when the Apes start attacking things and people, it looks pretty cool. My impression is that many of the effects are unfinished, and perhaps like First Class, the trailer team is working with the footage that is most complete, and I would guess that the effects houses probably started with the end stuff first. This could prove frustrating to viewers who are waiting for the expected, but still. As a fan of the original series, hopefully there’s some smart stuff in the midst of this simian warfare, but regardless, it’s high on our list of the most anticipated films of the summer.

Did Tim Burton’s reimaging sour you on all that is monkey?

Trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes Promises Monkey Invasion

Damon Houx — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 19:00:29 +0000

You can say this for the Rise of the Planet of the Apes trailer , it bears no resemblance to the last attempt to relaunch the Planet of the Apes franchise. This one suggests no connection to the other films in a good way. Rupert Wyatt‘s film is a revamp of the fourth film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes without the time travel, and instead has scientists led by James Franco making super-smart apes that then turn on the human populace. The film opens August 5. Check out the trailer…

We see glimpses of the cast, including Frieda Pinto as the good human, Tom Felton as someone being threatened, and Brian Cox as the old guy who knew it all. What we also see – in fleeting glimpses – is monkey destruction.

The type of film this most reminds of is a zombie picture, where the world gets turned upside down by a contagion. That’s a good model for this film as long as it can mix the heady ideas that made the original films so much fun to chew on.

The flip side is this could be something more in the Roland Emmerich wheel-house of rampant destruction. Either way it could be fun if it has the right amount of thrills. Though I think there’s was a missed opportunity not working in The Rolling Stones song “Monkey Man.” Perhaps Martin Scorsese has a patent on it.

Are you a monkey… man?

Anne Hathaway Discusses Her Poor Oscar Hosting Performance On ‘The Today Show’

Travis Woods — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:13:53 +0000

Anne Hathaway appeared yesterday on The Today Show and discussed the brutally bad reviews that she and James Franco received as hosts of the worst Oscars ever in the whole world ever times infinity plus one: “They said we were the worst show ever,” the actress told host Matt Lauer. “I think that qualifies as tough.”

And while the reviews of the show were tough, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Hathaway fared far better than her zonked out cohost, James Franco:

“A national survey of 241 viewers conducted by San Francisco Bay Area’s Q & A Research found that 36 percent gave Hathaway a very good to excellent rating to just 19 percent for Franco. Half of viewers (51 percent) want her back as host, while 26 percent wish to see Franco return.”

That isn’t too bad a score, considering how hyperactive the actress had to be just to overcompensate for Franco’s laconic performance.

Hathaway, personally, views the Oscar night as “several different experiences”:

“There was the critical reaction, which was awful. Then there are the people who have been coming up to me since then who stop and say, ‘I thought it was fantastic. I watched it with my family and we were entertained.’ I am very grateful to those people.”

When asked if she would return as an Oscar host, Hathaway gave a confusing answer worth of Franco himself:

“Why not? I don’t know. Maybe. Perhaps. No.”

What would you think about Hathaway returning to the Oscars?

Your Highness: Movie Review

Damon Houx — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 01:30:29 +0000

Though the title suggests a stoner comedy along the lines of The Pineapple Express, Your Highness is more of a goof on the fantasy and Sword and Sorcery movies that took over cinema in the early 1980′s, films that ranged from the studio financed Conan the Barbarian and Clash of the Titans, to the Italian and American rip-offs like Yor, the Hunter from the Future and Barbarian Queen. If you’ve got a soft spot for The Beastmaster, but also recognie that it’s kinda goofy, this movie is for you. Otherwise…

The Players

Directed by: David Gordon Green
Writers: Danny McBride Ben Best
Starring: Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, Justin Theroux

The Story

Thadeous (McBride) is the second son of King Tallious (Charles Dance) and therefore second in line to Fabious (James Franco) who is always successful on his magical journeys. Recently he’s rescued Belladonna (Deschanel) from capitivity, and plans to marry her. Then the evil Wizard Leezar shows up and steals her for “The Fuckening” where he will impregnate her with a dragon. Thadeous and Fabious are forced team up to find her, and eventually get the help of Isabel (Portman), who has a quest of her own.

The Good

Comedy from Unexpected Performers: Sure Danny McBride is going to be funny, but performers like Damien Lewis and Toby Jones are commited to the material, and it pays off in jokes and directions unexpected that kill. Oscar-winner Natalie Portman plays it straight, but then when she has to deliver filthy dialog she does it without a wink and it kills.
Justin Theroux: Playing the villain, his hamstrung plot for “The Fuckening” falls apart the further it goes along because of his incompetence.
All Out: Some of the jokes, and settings are just plain out there. From a fortune telling mythical creatures who’s also a pedophile, to a randy Minotaur, the film goes to some pretty strange places for laughs, but that it’s doing so in this setting
Brotherly Love: McBride and Franco don’t look like each other, but their relationship is very real, and that’s helped by Franco’s commitment to character. The film works because it never descends into parody (the closest it comes is a very direct mockery of Clash of the Titans Bubo) and the two play off each other well.
Cadence: Comedy works when it hits you with a surprise, and with David Gordon Green’s comedies, sometimes those surprises come from weirdly chosen inflections of a line, or weird digressions. Though McBride’s comic cadence is well defined – and he does it well here – Green constantly finds notes to hit that come out of nowhere.

The Bad

The Prologue: McBride’s character gets in trouble with midgets. Comedies that use midgets for punchlines are often bad, and though there’s one good joke in the mix, it starts the film off on the wrong foot, which is made worse by…

The Opening Credits: The pot angle of this film was a mislead, and the opening credits (which are vandalized while they play) sets this up to be more along the lines of a spoof movie. If the movie itself never tips its hand, the credits do, and so you’re left with the first couple minutes of the film kinda sucking.

The Specificity: Having grown up watching pretty much all of the films this film is riffing on, I get it, and I laughed hardily. For many who have context of a film like Krull or Excalibur, the genre being toyed with isn’t really so familiar as to play as well with people who don’t know it.

Overall

This is the sort of film that usually creates a binary response. If you like McBride’s comic stylings, and appreciate the references, then you’ll probably have fun with it. But those who aren’t McBride fans, or didn’t play a little Dungeons and Dragons, and never saw the fun of Krull are probably going to be left at a loss. Ultimately, the film is a goof, and perhaps part of what makes it appealing or unappealing is that they actually made it.

Rating: 7.5/10

Your Highness hits theaters April 8.

Interview: Danny McBride and James Franco on Brotherhood in Your Highness

Damon Houx — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:00:34 +0000

James Franco and Danny McBride play unlikely brothers in David Gordon Green’s Your Highness -, but they play well off each other. McBride finally has a straight man, and Franco gives the character the gravitas to the film’s silliness. It’s a good working relationship– though the two worked together before in Green’s The Pineapple Express. In Your Highness they’re joined by Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel as their love interests and Justin Theroux as an evil wizard. It’s a movie that loving plays on the tropes of early eighties sword and sorcery movies, which McBride co-wrote. The two also made for a fun interview. Check it out.

On Getting the Picture Made

How challenging was it to pitch this script?

Danny McBride: The first day we pitched this script, we came in and said “it’s Krull meets Barry Lyndon” and the executives were like “never pitch this movie like that ever again.” To us that is what it was, we wanted to approach it as a serious drama but have that fun that we had with a movie like Krull. That was the concept, and what was interesting about taking on this project was “can you make a legitimate fantasy adventure movie like this and still find a way to find comedy in it without making it a spoof?”

Can you talk about some of the movies you’ve watched for research?

DM: David Green and I went to film school together. I was a freshmen and he was in his second year and we both lived in the same dorm. I met him the first week I was going to school. When you go to film school, you’ve got all these guys who are trying to show everyone how smart they are. When they talk about movies it’s all of these pretentious arthouse films because they think those are the kinds of movies you have to like if you’re going to film school. One of the things that David and I instantly clicked on was that we appreciated those films but at the same time appreciated movies like Beastmaster, Krull and Dragonslayer, these fun movies that capture your imagination when you’re a kid. So it was awesome to be able to actually try to make one of those movies. It gave me an excuse to my wife for why I needed to be watching Krull on repeat, because I couldn’t have gotten away with it unless I was getting paid for it. It was a selfish reason to make this film.

James Franco: The first thing I ever saw in a movie theater was The Dark Crystal and I saw that repeatedly in the theater, then The Neverending Story and the original Clash of the Titans. They’re a little hokey now, but still have a lot of charm.

Was there anything you were particularly surprised at that you got away with?

DM: The fact that we made this movie was very surprising to us. David and I were never convinced that somebody would make this crazy movie. It was an opportunity to make a film that seemed so specific to what we wanted to see. I think we have the first Minotaur erection that has ever been filmed. We’ve made cinematic history. A lot of people have tried and haven’t been able to accomplish it but we did it, we did it.

Can you talk about the comedic structure and why is it typical for this kind of comedy, what it adds to make it funny?

DM: When we were coming up with the idea we only thought the comedy would work if the movie was approached as a serious fantasy film, and that’s where we made the comedy. When it came time to cast the film, and even the craftsman that we pulled onto the film it was serious first. The guy who designed the weapons designed the weapons for Braveheart. Our production designer worked for Danny Boyle and the person who designed the armor designed the armor for Kingdom of Heaven. We approached the movie as if it were a serious epic fantasy and found the comedy in the fact the more serious we took it, the more the comedy seemed to work. So in the writing of it we thought of it as a comedy second and as an adventure movie first. Then we tried to find that humor on the set.

With your historical research did you find that the mullet was a common hairstyle in the Middle Ages?

DM: We really wanted to make this an educational film for kids that people back in the Middle Ages, when there were two moons, people look just like people do now. We were modeling that haircut off of Mel Gibson’s Lethal Weapon. That’s what we were going for with that haircut.

On Production

Was there a lot of improv going on?

DM: There was a tone. I worked with David a few times before and – even the way we worked on Pineapple or the stuff we’ve done on “Eastbound and Down” – we always do one or two takes of what’s on the page and then from there David gets in and we start pushing it. And it’s not always to find jokes, we’ll improv so that everyone in the scene is on their toes. You find that reaction that you couldn’t have gotten when the actor know exactly what’s coming next. So improv-ing is essential to what we do and there’s a ton of it in there.

JF: When you have a movie where you improvise during every scene, it’s not just about finding funny lines – like Danny is saying – it does something to the actors because you’re more aware because you don’t know what’s coming next so you don’t get lulled into a way of doing the scene the same way one time after another. You’re much more aware, and it does something to the behavior. It makes it more immediate, it makes it more alive. And David won’t have you just improvise different lines, he’ll have you say it in very weird ways like “say it like a robot” or “say it like you were taking a big dump.”

DM: That was the direction he gave to Charles Dance at one point and it was very funny to see his reaction. He was like “What did I sign up for?”

Which scene do you remember that cause you guys to break character and laugh?

DM: The scene I had with Natalie (Portman) where I have to confront her about stealing this compass. The whole time David Gordon Green directs, he’s literally right out of frame of the camera. He stands there and makes you say the most ridiculous things and you can’t really hesitate. In the scene he’s like “Call her a bully and a whore.” I started doing it without thinking, but as soon as I looked at Natalie and “whore” came out I felt horrible. I couldn’t get through it – that was the hardest.

JF: I think we had a hard time with the wise wizard too. We were acting with a puppet and I remember we were short on time that day so it was actually a problem that we couldn’t finish it.

How was it working with Natalie Portman?

DM: David had been in talks with Natalie about another project and once we started getting movement on Your Highness it looked like that’s what was going to be next. In his conversations with Natalie, she brought up this project and said she was dying to do a comedy and wanted a chance to work with us. We were thrilled by that, because having actors like James and Natalie is what separates this movie. It’s not a movie filled with your typical comedians. It’s cast with a lot of prestigious actors and that is what made it unique and fun. I was embarrassed to hand Natalie the script the first time, “should I just go through and take out all this dirty stuff?”’ And David said “no we’ve got to let her know what she’s in for.” The stuff that I thought would make her blush was what she thought was funny. On the set she never shied away, she can definitely hang with the boys. She wasn’t intimidated by any of the foul stuff going on.

JF: No she wasn’t.

How did you find the actor who plays Courtney?

DM: Courtney was played by Rasmus Hardiker and it was one of those deals with him where we had been auditioning all the guys for Courtney. As soon as we saw him, before he even came into the room, we were just — you kind of already know that this is our guy. He was sitting in the waiting room and out of all of these people we could identify that that was going to be our guy. He’s comedically brilliant, fast on his toes.

On Performance

James, how did you approach your character?

JF: I tried to play the character pretty earnestly, and because it’s a comedy we can get away with a lot of the cheesiness that maybe can hurt a film that’s completely earnest. Because we get away with it you can address some of the real feelings and real dynamics between brothers, and jealousy and feelings. That’s kind of the secret of bromances- you can talk about relationships between guys and brothers because it’s a comedy and if it wasn’t it would probably just be boring, or cheesy.

Or kinky…

JF: You could go the kinky rout and that would work too.

What kind of training did you have to do for swordplay?

JF: Well Danny was the writer so he conveniently wrote his character as someone who was very bad at using swords – he didn’t have to train at all. I trained a bit, but I had done literally nine months of training, seven days a week for Tristan and Isolde because I was a young actor that didn’t know that that was insane. I didn’t get to use much of it on that film so I got to use it on this movie.

Danny, between Fred Simmons and Kenny Powers and this character you seem to have a comic archetype in the roles that you play, how do you modulate your performance?

DM: When we did The Foot Fist Way that was an independent film, we shot it for 70 grand in like 17 days. Jody Hill and I hadn’t been writing things like that before that movie. We started figuring out that if we change who the protagonist is and get the audience to align with a character they wouldn’t normally align with, it opened up all these different comedic possibilities for the story. With Foot Fist we were just starting to scratch the surface and wanted to do more with it. That’s why we set up “Eastbound & Down” to explore that architecture. “Let’s take this almost cliched story about an underdog, but let’s put the audience with someone that they are not used to following in this kind of story.” That was the design of those things. When it came time to approach this, it was shifting the lens of who you typically follow in these films and trying to find someone that’s a little bit more unexpected. It allows you to hit some of those cliched moments with a new perspective. To us, that’s what’s comically interesting about it and what separated it from other films that are in this genre. I think it’s a fine balance, so you find those layers of how exactly are you going to get an audience to root for someone who is so morally corrupt or who makes these bad choices. For each character it’s a different thing. With Fred Simmons he’s dealing with adultery and loss and betrayal, so the question is “how do you have a guy do this but still find redemption?” “Eastbound’s” the same, you figure out what their wound is and how you can get an audience behind that wound. In this film it was based on sibling rivalry, on someone who felt he was living in the shadows. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to play around with that and how to get someone to identify with this person that normally they wouldn’t identify with.

Your Highness opens April 8. Check it out.

James Franco To Teach Film Class At NYU

Travis Woods — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:29:25 +0000

After massively bombing at the Oscars this year, James Franco is returning to that prolonged performance art project that is ‘James Franco’ by following in the footsteps of Winter’s Bone director Debra Granik and Zoolander co-screenwriter John Hamburg—he’s teaching a third-year graduate class on directing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The course deals with adapting poetry into short films, and only accepts a maximum of 12 students. Franco is set to receive his MFA in film production from the school this May. And. As John Tintori—chair of the graduate program at Tisch, puts it:

“He’s here to teach because he really knows something about directing that he can share with our students…He’s incredibly prolific, and that comes from a real work ethic – and that’s another thing to impart to our students.”

In addition to this course, you may remember that Franco recently hooked up with Columbia College Hollywood to offer the “Master Class: Editing James Franco…With James Franco,” in which 12 students “create a half-hour documentary using footage from his film career.”

Whether or not this is all some large-scale, I’m Still Here-styled oddball performance, or if Franco really is just digging the massive multi-tasking (or maybe it’s some kind of atonement for Spider-Man 3), you’ve got to admit, the guy’s got drive.

What do you think of Franco’s decision to teach the Tisch course?

Mila Kunis Signs up to go to Oz

Damon Houx — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 22:04:51 +0000

Sam Raimi‘s Oz, The Great and Powerful is casting up and Mila Kunis has now signed on, according to Variety. She’ll be joining James Franco, who’s starring as the titular wizard. The film is a prequel to the classic L. Frank Baum novel and film The Wizard of Oz, and Kunis will play Theodora, a young witch who’s rebuffed by Oz and turns wicked. The film is at Walt Disney studios, and currently has no release date.

Having gone through a long run in television with “That 70′s Show”, Kunis has now blossomed into a credible leading lady. She pulled romantic comedy leading lady duties in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and in the upcoming Friends with Benefits, and showed that she was game for anything in Black Swan. She’s been a strong on-screen presence, and is now one of the top choices for roles in her age range.

That said, making a prequel to The Wizard of Oz is – on paper – such a terrible idea. The 1939 film works because the land of Oz is pure fantasy, and turning it into a real place seems to squander what made the work so special. Then again, it’s not as if Baum himself didn’t sequelize the material.

Between Raimi, Franco and Kunis this is a project with a lot of talent, and if it crafts its own world it could be exciting to see them play with witches and magic. Franco and Kunis were recently paired in the film Date Night.

Will you be off to see the Wizard?

New Red Band Teaser for Your Highness

Damon Houx — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 20:12:04 +0000

As we get closer to the the April 8 release of Your Highness, we’re seeing the marketing for the film kick in to high gear (no pun intended). Recently we’ve seen new posters, a tie-in prequel comic book, and screenings and junkets start shortly for the film. And to keep interest up, Universal has released a new Red Band Trailer for the film, which stars Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel and is directed by David Gordon Green. Take a look…

This looks absolutely filthy and insane, and everything you could possibly want from a movie starring Danny McBride as a pot-smoking knight that battles magicians and minotaurs. It’s pretty amazing that the film was made and is being released at all, even moreso that it’s being released by Universal. The film will be screening shortly, though the film is under review embargo until the release date for now.

Early word was good, but with a film like this (as specific as this?) there’s always going to be audiences who don’t respond, don’t get it, or just don’t like it. But then again, if a film like this misses, it tends to really miss. The film was written by Ben Best and Danny McBride, who also wrote The Foot Fist Way and “Eastbound and Down,” so it should – hopefully – be along those lines.

How many hours of Dungeons and Dragons does it take to write a film like Your Highness?

Your Highness gets Three Character-Themed Posters

Damon Houx — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 01:31:30 +0000

Your Highness, a sword-and-sorcery pot comedy starring Danny McBride, James Franco, Academy award winner Natalie Portman, and Zooey Deschanel opens April 8, and it feels like the advertising campaign for the David Gordon Green film should start kicking in to gear here any second. Though we’ve seen a hilarious red band trailer, the film has been relatively quiet since then in its build up to its release in less than a month.Today, Cinematical, IGN, and JoBlo debuted character posters for the film. Take a look…

It seems they’re selling the comedy with both Franco and McBride, but Portman gets to play it serious here:

Portman also seems willing to sell the sex, which was apparent in the red band trailer. Universal is trying to set the tone here, which suggests it’s not exactly grounded by any history, and has a touch of Scary Movie-esque unseriousness. The film was always going to be a little weird and out there, but funny is funny, and McBride has been on fire with Eastbound and Down while Green delivered with The Pinapple Express.

Are you high on Your Highness?

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